What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

To boast that one never flirts is actually a kind of flirtation.

All women seem by nature to be coquettes.

A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love.

We often are consoled by our want of reason for misfortunes that reason could not have comforted.

Fortune turns all things to the advantage of those on whom she smiles.